Back!

A sudden glare of sunlight tinged blue as it's filtered through the curtains and the paper paneling of my bedroom window. My bare feet on the tatami floor. A bowl of day-old yakisoba reheated in the microwave for breakfast. Tea.

So begins the second day of my second contract-year in Japan.

It's Sunday morning, but I'm not getting ready for church: the airline left one of my bags behind at LAX, and it will be delivered sometime today between nine and twelve o'clock. While I wait I'll attempt to coax my life slowly into order with a bit of cleaning, organizing, and, of course, blogging.

Already, this year promises to be markedly different from last. Jennifer came to the decision over summer break that she would not return for a second year. She's here now, packing and internet-job-searching and saying goodbye to friends and thereby attempting to coax order into her own life. In a few days she'll be gone and I will be roommate-less.

August provided a much-needed break for me. It was fantastic to be around friends and family, to see where they are in their lives and to receive their words and prayers of encouragement. It was invigorating to be in America, too: to talk loudly in public, strike up conversations with strangers, eat bread and cheese from Trader Joe's, and go to bookstores where nearly all their stock was in my language. The three weeks I spent in California provided fuel for my long under-fueled personal flame. I'm grateful.

This year promises new challenges--with no longer having the support of a roommate who shares my Christian-based outlook on the world--along with familiar challenges--the tedium of my job, language difficulties, and the general and ever-present struggle for "community." But I'm also approaching the next eleven months with a renewed sense of hope. I have great enthusiasm for friendships developed last year that promise to deepen and grow over the next. And the creative outlets of music and art, greatly untouched in past months, still await utilization. I'm planning a birthday party for two weeks from now. Everyone can come. You can come, too. Check the facebook event for details.

Over the next eleven months, please pray that my relationships with the teachers and students at my school might be enriched, and that I would also find mutual peace and comfort in the relationships I have with other AETs and the few other friends in Moka. Pray for my continued effort to learn the language and to adjust to Japanese culture in an appreciative yet self-preserving way. Also, know that I am thinking about what life will look like post-Japan and will be applying for graduate school soon; I would appreciate any encouragement, advice, or prayer you have to offer on that subject.

Thank you for your continued support and readership. See you later. Mata-ne.

Ain't got nobody and monkey sat in my miso cucumbers.

Yesterday was the last day of school before summer vacation. This doesn't mean that a new school year will start up again in September; in Japan, the school year runs from April to March. But it does mean that I have now been in Japan for eleven months and have successfully (at least in some sense) experienced every stage of the junior high school year.

I've been pondering and attempting to come up with a word that concisely summarizes my first year in Japan. If it were a Japanese word, I would definitely have to go with sumimasen, a phrase which can very conveniently be adapted to mean either "Thank you," "Excuse me," or, "I'm sorry," depending on the situation. But as far as English descriptors go, I'll have to settle with four:

Lonely. Restrained. Introspective. Revolutionary.

As I think my blog has faithfully reflected, being a foreign English teacher in Moka, Japan has been difficult. At work, there's a lot of feeling like I have to hold back and conform to social expectations, and both at work and at home, my friend pool is a bit spare. Though I don't necessarily miss America, per se, I have come to appreciate just how friendly and outgoing Americans are in comparison to some other cultures. I don't know how I'd get through it all if it weren't for Skype and the little people who appear in a small video chat box on my computer screen from time to time.

And yet, for all their difficulty, I can state confidently that my time and experiences in Japan have been meaningful, uplifting, and have led me towards positive introspection and change. As a teacher, I see that I've grown considerably in my approach to ESL instruction and in my interactions with Japanese junior high schoolers. And the challenges and the loneliness of this place teach me daily to rely on God and to see her even in the places where the concept of a loving and omniscient God is never even given the slightest acknowledgment. Revolutionary.

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Yesterday evening I also had the unique opportunity to patronize a certain dining establishment which has, since its opening, attained a certain level of small fame. It's just your average little whole-in-the-wall izakaya, aside from the small detail that two of the waiters on staff are...monkeys. Yep, that's right: I went to a monkey bar. The monkeys wore weird little uniforms, brought us hot towels to wipe our hands, and poured our beer. I must admit, the whole thing made me a bit uncomfortable, both for sanitary reasons (my appetite wasn't exactly piqued when I walked in the front door and the whole place smelled exactly like a pet shop) and out of concern for the general wellbeing of the animals themselves. The highlight of the evening was certainly when the younger monkey suddenly lost control and began to jump all over our table, turning over dishes and planting a foot right in the middle of the lovely platter of miso cucumbers that I had been attempting to savor. At the end of the evening, the monkeys were made to put on a show for us, attaining such feats as jumping rope, riding on rocking horses, performing traditional Japanese folk dances, and even playing basketball.

I have absolutely no interest in ever going back to this place, but at least I got some cool pictures.

Only in Japan.

Why am I here and not over--over--over there?

I'm still dwelling on how much I want to be with so many people I'm not with right now. And the only way I know how to express that is with dancing. And unitards. This video is far from perfect, and if it actually succeeds in communicating any of the things I want to say, it is thanks to Dirty Projectors for the inspirational tune and oh-so-fitting lyrics.

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It's just June, I guess.

Tonight I sat out on my porch for an hour and a half watching the rain.

June has been a long and difficult month. It is a month of no public holidays. The weeks rush by, but the weekends go past so quickly it seems like they never even happened. The weather, nearly every day, is overcast and humid. I started taking Japanese classes on the eighteenth but I my heart hasn’t really been in it. It doesn’t help that I began writing a novel on the fifteenth and it currently takes up nearly every minute of my spare time. But my heart hasn’t really been in writing, either.

The truth is, I miss my friends and family like crazy. Lately, it seems like the absence of these loved ones from my life is a real and physical emptiness in my own body. I wonder: What the hell was I thinking, moving to Japan to teach English? Am I really going to stay here for another year? How? Why?

But, I swear, there’s something about the rain here in Japan that’s different from any rain I’ve ever seen before. It’s like I can feel it under my skin, even when I’m not actually out in it. And the lighting as the sun sank, invisibly, behind the horizon but turned the whole cloudy sky a pale orange in doing so: my heart almost couldn’t take it. I would have sat out there longer except that, around seven thirty when it got dark enough that I couldn’t see the rain anymore anyway, I figured I had better eat something before it got too late and affected my sleep pattern.

Elementary school tomorrow. And a field trip to Tokyo with my second-year students on Tuesday. And then it will be July. Just a little bit longer. God give me the strength.

I like music. I play skiing.

Today one of my first-year classes learned the verbs “play” and “like.” In preparation for a mini presentation that they will give next week, each student had to write his or her own sentences using “I like _____” and “I play _____.” I walked around the classroom, checking their work and seeing if anyone had any questions.

One girl raised her hand hesitatingly as I walked past. Now, when I first met this girl I admittedly suspected that she might be one of the “slow learners” (the “politically correct” term that gets used in Japan: certainly less ambiguous than Special Education, as we say in the States). This might sound horrible but I actually do have to try to be really perceptive about these things on my own because, although there are several students at my school who have special needs or significant learning disabilities, most parents, out of shame or denial or some other personal reasons, absolutely refuse to put their children in the Slow Learners’ class. And maybe, in most subjects, these kids can get away with just sitting there in frustrated silence. But in English class, where everyone is constantly called upon to read sentences and answer questions out loud, they definitely stand out. So I have to be sensitive as to who they are and just how severe their disability is so as to not embarrass them in class, if I can at all help it.

As it turns out, I don’t think that this girl is a slow learner any more, but she is incredibly awkward and painfully shy. Which is why I was quite surprised when she flagged me down and pointed to the sentence she had just written in her notebook, which read, “I like Man.”

At first I was too shocked to feel like laughing. Okay, so she likes men, but is it really so important that she feels it deserves to be the first example she gives for this assignment?

So I read the sentence out loud to her: “I like man?”

“I like manga,” she said softly and hesitatingly, looking anxiously down at the paper.

“Oh!” I couldn’t help but release a giggle of amusement and relief. For those less familiar with Japanese pop culture, “manga” is a form of comics that originates in Japan. Everyone likes manga at least a little bit. It’s not considered at all abnormal for grown businessmen with families to read manga in their spare time.

I corrected her spelling and told her, “Good job!” But I also felt inclined to explain to her the meaning of “I like Man.”

I told her what “man” was in Japanese. She just sort of smiled awkwardly and nodded: not the appreciative reaction I was hoping for. So I translated the full sentence. But she only bent her face down further and huddled over her notebook. Her shoulders were shaking, but I don’t think it was because she was laughing.

I’m pretty sure I completely embarrassed her.

I told my English teacher, Mr. Ishikawa, the story after class and we both had a good laugh over it, but I couldn’t help thinking back and feeling bad for making the girl blush. Right now she’s probably still thinking, “I used to like English. But now I hate it. And I hate Ms. Meghan, too.”

But, oh man, was it funny.

An American Lunchbox in Japan

Japanese children think that Americans eat hamburgers on picnics.

Since half of my AET job description is “cultural ambassador,” I saw it as my duty as an American to set the record straight.

Today was Bento Day. A bento is a kind of Japanese lunchbox. There are little shops all over the place that specialize in bento. You can order a plate with any number of different lunch items—usually rice and at least one or two, but often a lot more, little dishes—that will be packaged into a neat little (usually) plastic box with (usually) a little rubber band holding the lid on. You are free, then, to bring this box with you on a picnic, a hike, or to your office lunch. Or even, once a month, to school.

In public elementary and junior high school, all students and teachers, with almost no exceptions, are required to eat the school lunch. School lunch isn’t bad. And, by Japanese standards, it’s pretty cheap (the standard price is ¥5000 [roughly 50 USD by the current exchange rate] per month but I don’t drink milk so I get away with paying only ¥4400).

But one day out of the month, everyone gets to bring a bento. Teachers can get away with picking one up from 7/11 or bringing (as one of my English teachers did this month) just a big plate of salad from home. But, if you’re a student in junior high school, your bento had better follow an unwritten, yet very strict, set of guidelines.

First of all, you need a cute little bag or a cloth to wrap everything up in. Inside this bag, your mother stacks a set of nifty matching containers that hold your lunch. One of these containers is almost certainly filled with white rice. Fried rice is also acceptable and maybe you can get away with fried noodles; I’m still a bit hazy on where this line gets drawn. The second container is a hodgepodge of tiny paper or foil cups containing what appears to be two spoonfuls each of leftovers from the last six nights. One cup perhaps contains a piece of breaded pork, one a meatball, one a salad, one a few bites of spaghetti. If you’re lucky you might get some fried chicken, but you’ll probably just have to settle for a piece of broiled fish and an array of different pickled vegetables. Also, make sure you don’t forget the fork and spoon and the pair of chopsticks that match the set of containers your lunch came in. Because then you’ll be forced to use a set of waribashi (wooden disposable chopsticks) that your homeroom teacher keeps handy in his desk. And that would just throw off the whole experience.

I don’t have a cute little set of containers for my lunch, but I do have some nice Tupperware that work just fine. So, on Bento Day, I usually fill one large Tupperware with leftover spaghetti, pack some carrot sticks or a piece of fruit, toss in a little bottle of Yakult, and I’m good to go. Sometimes I bring a sandwich, but that’s about as crazy as things get.

The students are always really interested to see what I’ve brought in my bento, and equally amazed to hear that I actually made it myself (“What? You mean your mother didn’t make it for you?”). Today, I took it upon myself to explain to the group I was sitting with that American students almost always have sandwiches in their bento boxes. They nodded, considering this carefully and acknowledging that it indeed made sense. Then one girl asked me, “What about hamburgers?”

I shook my head. “No. Never.” All seven students sitting within earshot responded the same: by widening their eyes and saying, in unison, “Ehhhh?”

“Rice?” said another girl.

“Not usually,” I told her. They all looked confounded.

This incident wouldn’t have impressed me so much had it been the first time that I’ve encountered this misconception about Americans having hamburgers in their lunchboxes. Another student wrote something to that effect in his notebook just a few weeks ago. It was in response to an in-class assignment to generate a sentence that employed the new grammar point they were learning. His grammar was fine, so I didn’t think the timing was appropriate for me to question the content. But today it was time for me to take a stand.

Someone has been feeding these children lies. American school children do not get BigMacs in their lunchboxes. People don’t barbecue their lunch and then take it with them on a hike. Well, maybe some people do, but they’re not normal. They’re deviants. They don’t represent the American norm, which is good old-fashioned PB&J: white bread, grape jelly, and Skippy.* Nothing more, nothing less.

*Okay, I admit, I no longer eat white bread if I have a choice, grape jelly is lame, and I’ve long since come to favor natural over hydrogenated peanut butter; but that’s beside the point. We’re talking about America here people, and I’m not going to let my own sissy preferences tarnish the national icon that is the classic peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Again, I direct you to the disclaimer in this blog’s first entry.

京都

The fact is, the longer I put off updating my blog, the more pressure I feel to make a decent account of my long silence, which makes me feel all the more inclined to continue to put if off. A lot has happened since the beginning of March: my third-year students graduated, the school year ended, I went home to California for spring vacation, a new school year started, I took a trip to Kyoto. And here is my attempt to somehow bypass all of that and bring you to the place where I am now. ☺

However, I can’t not tell you a bit about Kyoto. Knowing that Kyoto is there makes me feel better about Japan as a whole. In Kyoto one discovers a wealth of Japanese art, culture, beauty, and history that seems depressingly absent from the Kanto region. Or perhaps just absent from the tract-house-and-chain-businesses-lined streets of Moka. I went during Japan’s “Golden Week,” so called because it’s a week when three public holidays occur three days in a row; and, as a result, all of Japan goes on vacation at the same time. For this one week, the trains are crowded, airline tickets are twice the usual cost, and booking a hotel room less than a month in advance is just about impossible. Everywhere I went in Kyoto was completely overrun with tourists—foreign and Japanese alike. But I loved it. A lot. In four days, I came nowhere near running out of things to see, and I eagerly anticipate my next opportunity to visit.